


Wuskripa

by eternaleponine



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clexa Halloween Week, F/F, Halloween
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 17:07:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12512164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: It's been 214 days sincePraimfayaleft Earth uninhabitable again, for everyone except Clarke and Madi, the little Nightblood she found and adopted.But if they're the only two people left alive on the ground, who - or what - is lurking in the woods?For Clexa Halloween Week, Day 2: Vampires, Werewolves, Ghosts, Zombies





	Wuskripa

**Author's Note:**

> This story occurs a few months after Clarke finds Madi, so Madi is around 7 or 8.

"And then there were the scariest ones of all," Clarke said, leaning in to Madi, hands out and fingers spread. The little girl's eyes widened, and she hardly seemed to be breathing as she waited for Clarke to continue. "Unlike most of their kind, they could walk in the daytime, so you might have a vampire sitting right next to you and you _wouldn't know it_." 

She was close enough that she could see Madi's throat bob. Her hands were clenched in her lap, fingers laced together so tightly they'd gone white. 

" _But_ ," Clarke said, "they had to be very careful about going in the sun, because there was one thing that could give them away." 

Madi gulped. "What?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper. "What was it, Clarke?"

"If they went out into the sun," Clarke whispered, "if they let the light hit their bare skin... they... would... _sparkle_!" She reached out and grabbed Madi, tickling her sides and making her screech. 

The girl batted her hands away, screwing up her face as she swallowed back her giggles. "That's not scary!" she protested. 

"I dunno," Clarke teased. "I think it would be pretty scary if I thought someone was just a regular person and then all of a sudden the sun hit them and they lit up like sunlight on the water..."

Madi scowled. "What sun?" she grumbled. 

Clarke silently agreed. It had been a long time since they'd seen the sun. A week or more, and maybe it was just bad weather or maybe it was the continued fallout of the second wave of _Praimfaya_. There was no way to know, really, and in the end it didn't matter, did it? As long as it didn't make them sick, that was all she cared.

"I asked for a _scary_ story," Madi said. "That wasn't _scary_." 

_That's because the scariest stories I know are all true ones,_ Clarke thought, but of course she didn't say it. It surprised her a little that Madi even wanted to hear anything scary, considering what she'd already been through in her short life. Clarke suspected she didn't really mind the stories that tended to be more silly-scary than truly frightening, no matter what she said.

"Why do _I_ always have to be the one to tell the stories?" Clarke asked. "How come you never tell _me_ a story?" 

"Because you're older!" Madi said. "You know more stories!"

"Maybe," Clarke said. "But it still doesn't seem very fair..."

Madi rolled her eyes, but then she grinned. "Do you want me to tell you a story?" she asked. "A really for real scary one?"

"Why not?" Clarke said, leaning back against the fallen tree that helped form the perimeter of their camp. "Tell me your scariest story, and I'll decide if it's really for real scary." 

Madi stuck her tongue out at Clarke, but then launched into what probably would be a very scary story for a little kid, about a creature called the _Wuskripa_ that roamed through the forests, eating up bad children. A Grounder bogeyman of sorts. She went on and on about its teeth and claws, and the way it sounded when it breathed.

Clarke heard a twig snap, and she instantly reached for her rifle with one hand and Madi with the other. "Shh," she breathed, and Madi was instantly silent. "Get behind me."

She pushed herself up onto her knees and felt Madi pressed up against her back, so close Clarke could feel her breath against her neck. 

Another crack. It had to be an animal, but how big, and how deadly? Could it kill them before she killed it? 

Madi's fingers gripped the back of her jacket. "Is it the _Wuskripa_?" she asked, her voice high and breathy. 

"It's okay," she told Madi. "You're safe. I won't let anything happen to you."

She lifted her rifle and aimed it in the direction the sound seemed to be coming from, her finger resting lightly on the trigger. 

"Please don't," a voice said. 

Clarke's heart stopped and her blood turned to ice. 

She knew that voice. 

She knew that voice, because she had heard it in her dreams every night for 257 days, dreams that were nightmares even when they were of the best and sweetest moments they'd shared, because it had all ended too soon and too fast. 

She _knew_ that voice, and she knew that it was impossible that she was hearing it.

"Who's there?" she demanded, forcing her voice and hands not to shake. "Show yourself."

"I will," the voice said, and still Clarke couldn't see her, and maybe there was nothing to see. Maybe she was imagining all of this, maybe she'd fallen asleep and this was all a dream or maybe she'd eaten something she shouldn't have and was hallucinating... "Just don't shoot. I don't know if I would survive it a second time."

A shadow emerged from the trees, became a silhouette and then, when she finally got close enough that the glow of the fire touched her face, the person that Clarke had never thought she would see again... twice, because she'd thought it when she'd failed to save her, and then again after the City of Light.

"Hello, Clarke," Lexa said softly. A smile curved her lips and her eyes were bright in the flickering light, and she looked so real, sounded so real... Clarke's vision swam as her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them furiously away.

"Clarke?" A tiny voice behind her, and it was only then she registered the pressure against her back, elbows and knees digging in as Madi huddled against her. "Clarke, who is that?"

"Stay where you are," Clarke said. 

Lexa held up her hands and even took a step back, going down to one knee so that they were on the same level. She held out her hands toward the fire, Clarke assumed to warm them, but maybe also to show that they were empty, and that she wasn't reaching for a weapon. 

She kept one eye on Lexa even as she turned her head to look at Madi. "You see her too?"

Madi nodded. "Who is it?" she asked. "Why does know your name?" 

"I—" Clarke didn't know how to answer that. _She was my heart,_ she thought. _And then I lost her. Now... I don't know who she is, or **how** she is..._

"Is she one of your friends?" Madi asked. "Did they come back early? Is it safe for other people now?" She sounded both scared and hopeful, and Clarke tried to put on her best calm face. 

"I need you to go to the Rover," she said. "Okay? Go and shut the door and don't come out until I say."

Madi shook her head. "I don't want to," she said. "Not unless you come with me."

"I'll go," Lexa said. "I'll come back in the light. I should have waited. I just..." Clarke could hear the thickness in her voice, like she was trying to hold back emotion. Like she was trying not to cry. 

That, more than anything, convinced her that this was real. Impossible... but still somehow real.

"No," Clarke said. "Don't go. Just..." She lowered her rifle, set it down beside her and reached an arm back to wrap around Madi, pulling her close. "I just need a few minutes, okay?" she told the little girl. "It won't be long. I promise." 

Madi looked like she was going to object, but finally she nodded, and Clarke squeezed her once then let her go, watching her climb up into the back of the Rover and closing the door behind her. Clarke had no doubt that she would try her hardest to see what was happening, and she didn't really blame her. She just couldn't do this with the little girl standing right there. 

She turned to look at Lexa. "You died," she said. "I watched you die."

"Almost," Lexa said. "I almost died."

Clarke shook her head. "You..." She swallowed. "Titus... the Flame... You were _there_!"

Lexa blinked, a line forming between her eyebrows. "Where?" 

"The City of Light! I— I had to take the Flame, I had to—"

"Only a Nightblood can take the Flame," Lexa said. "How—?"

"Ontari," Clarke said, unable to stop the grimace of revulsion at what they'd done, what they'd had to do, to the Azgeda girl who had been Nia's pawn, and then ALIE's. She had murdered the other Nightbloods, Lexa's novitiates, but she still hadn't deserved to end like that. "We used her like Mount Weather used your people. We had to."

Lexa's eyes closed, then opened again, and Clarke could see the shimmer of tears. "She won the Conclave, then?"

"There was no Conclave," Clarke said. "She... she killed them before it began. While they slept." 

The tears broke past the dam of her eyelashes and slid down her cheeks. "Oh," she whispered. 

"But she didn't get to take the Flame. I took it, escaped with it, tried to get Luna to take it, but she refused, but _someone_ had to, and—" Clarke stopped. "You don't know any of this?"

Lexa shook her head. "They took me away from Polis and didn't tell me anything that was going on. It wouldn't have meant anything to me anyway." 

Now it was Clarke's turn to frown. "Why not?"

"Because I didn't remember anything," Lexa said. "Everything from the time I took the Flame until I woke up with a bullet wound in my gut and the back of my neck stitched together was gone."

Clarke's eyes dropped to Lexa's stomach, but it was too dark and there were too many layers of clothing for her to be able to see the scar left behind by the bullet that had been meant for her, that she would have happily taken if it would have saved Lexa... 

"But you remember now," she said. "Or did someone just tell you?"

"I remember," Lexa said. "Not everything, I think, but I remember a lot of things, and sometimes I'll see something that triggers a memory, or I'll have a dream that when I wake up I remember so vividly I think maybe it wasn't a dream at all." Her lips curved into a soft smile, and Clarke ached to reach out and trace her fingers over her lips, to touch her face, to... She balled her hands into fists to stop herself. "That's how you came back to me," Lexa said softly. "You were one of the first things. I wanted to find you, but I was too weak, and then..." She closed her eyes, and it felt like a very long time before she opened them again, and tears flowed down her cheeks without her trying to stop them. "I thought I was alone. I thought I was the last person left in the world." 

"So did I," Clarke whispered, and then she gave in and reached out, closing the distance between them, her hands cupping Lexa's face, and then she crushed their lips together, kissing her like her life depended on it, and in that moment it really, genuinely felt like it did. Like if she wasn't really real, that kiss would make her so. If she wasn't really alive, she could breathe life into her. 

Lexa's arms wrapped around her, dragged her in, and Clarke shifted to straddle her lap, knees planted on either side of her hips, and for a moment the entire world shrunk to just the two of them, just the heat of Lexa's mouth, their tongues touching and tangling, the warmth radiating from her skin that was under too many layers to get to...

Her heart hammered against her ribs as she finally pulled away to gasp in a breath of air that was almost certainly radiation soaked, but it didn't matter. She didn't care. She could survive it. They both could. Clearly they could survive anything, especially together. 

Lexa slid her fingers under the back of Clarke's jacket, finding the skin at the small of her back, damp now with sweat from the heat of the fire and her arousal. "But you weren't alone," she said, nudging her chin toward where the Rover sat at the edge of their camp. "The girl..."

_Madi._

Somehow, just for a moment, she'd forgotten. Guilt crashed over her, an icy wave that quenched her ardor and drove her out of Lexa's lap... but it wasn't enough to make her pull away completely. She settled at Lexa's side, close enough that their knees still touched. "I found her a few months ago," Clarke said. " _Ai strik Natblida._ " 

" _Natblida?_ " 

Clarke nodded. "That's why we're alive. Nightblood protects us from the radiation. When the wave came, you got sick, didn't you? But then you recovered, but everyone else died." Lexa nodded. "That's what happened with _Floukru_ ," Clarke said. "They came to us for help, the few that were left. Most of them died, but Luna lived."

Something flickered in Lexa's eyes, and Clarke pressed her lips together. She would have to tell Lexa sooner or later. Better not to let her live with false hope. She shook her head. "She died in the Conclave," Clarke said. "Fighting for no one."

Lexa frowned. "You said there was no Conclave. You said Ontari—"

Clarke shook her head again. "A different Conclave. To decide who would get control of the bunker. There was only enough room for 1200 people, so each Clan sent a warrior to fight, and whoever won got to decide which Clan would get to claim it." She bit the inside of her cheek, not wanting to admit what she'd done, what she'd agreed to do, while the Conclave was happening. Someday she would tell Lexa, but not today. "Octavia won, and said that each clan would get to select a hundred people to share it. So we're not the last people on earth... but we are the last people on the ground. For now."

"Then Ontari's blood stayed with you?" 

"No. After the City of Light—" She looked at Lexa. "You were _in_ the City of Light. How can you have been there when you weren't dead, and you weren't chipped when died. Or didn't die. They took the Flame out of you, and you were inside it."

Lexa looked away, her lips pursed like she was thinking. "Maybe that's why I couldn't remember," she said. "Maybe those memories stayed in the Flame. A part of me was there. The Commander part of me."

Clarke looked at her, surprised not at the conclusion, but that Lexa had been the one to come to it. She immediately felt a stab of guilt at underestimating Lexa's intelligence. "Maybe removing it was like a traumatic brain injury," she said. "Over time, your brain figured out how to compensate, how to rewire after losing the AI, and you started remembering things." It was as good an explanation as any, even though there was no way to really be sure of the science of it. She hadn't seemed to have any kind of after-effects from having the Flame implanted, but then she'd only had it for minutes, not years, and the entire time she'd been in a virtual reality. 

"So you found the girl," Lexa said, drawing them back to their original conversation. There was so much to talk about, so much to say, so much time that they'd lost... but it wasn't just the two of them. 

"Madi," Clarke said. "She was alone. Everyone she knew was dead, but she was alive, and she wasn't giving up, because she was sure that if she had lived, there must be _someone_ else out there." She smiled. "She's probably braver and stronger than both of us."

" _Yu hod em in,_ " Lexa said softly. _You love her._

" _Yu na hod em in seintaim,_ " Clarke told her. _You'll love her too._ Because she had no doubt that Lexa would. She'd seen her with her novitiates, her Nightbloods. Why would Madi be any different?

" _Sha,_ " Lexa said, with equal certainty. " _Ba em na hod ai in?_ " _Will she love me?_

"I guess we should find out," Clarke said. She touched the back of Lexa's hand gently, then stood up, making sure to grab her rifle, and went to the Rover, knocking on the door. "It's okay, Madi," she said. "You can come out now."

The door cracked open and her pale face peered out, looking around. "Is she gone?" she asked.

"She's still by the fire," Clarke said. 

"You still didn't say who she _is_ ," Madi accused.

"I know," Clarke said. She pushed the back door of the Rover all the way open and boosted herself up, sitting on the edge with her legs dangling. She patted the spot beside her and Madi scooted into it. Clarke laid the rifle across their laps, drawing up the strap and spreading it across their knees. "You see this name?" she said, pointing to the biggest one, right in the center.

Madi nodded. "The one you never talk about. The story you never tell."

"That's right," Clarke said. "Because of all the people I lost, she was the one that hurt the most."

"Why?" Madi asked.

"Because I loved her more than anyone," Clarke said. 

Madi looked at her, clearly not understanding, but of course Clarke wasn't doing a very good job explaining. How could she? So she just said it, said the impossible thing: "That's her. That's my Lexa."

Madi's face creased and she ran her fingers lightly over the names. "But all these people..."

"I know," Clarke said. "I thought she died. She almost did. But she lived, and now she's here." She brushed back a strand of Madi's hair that had stuck to her face. "Do you want to meet her?"

Madi hesitated for a second, then nodded. 

"Okay," Clarke said, and took her hand as she hopped down, leading her back over to the fire even though it was only a few yards away. She crouched down and put her arm around Madi's waist. "Madi, this is Lexa. Lexa, Madi."

" _Hei,_ Madi," Lexa said, her voice soft, her face relaxed. 

For a second Madi said nothing, and then, " _Yu nou laik Wuskripa?_ "

Clarke could see Lexa's jaw twitch as she fought back a laugh. "No," she said, her expression grave. " _Ai nou laik Wuskripa nowe._ "

Madi studied her for another moment, then nodded, a tiny jerk of her chin. "Good," she said. "Because if you were I would have to make you leave."

"And if you told me to leave, I would go," Lexa replied, and Clarke actually believed it was true. If Madi wanted her gone, she would go, because Lexa understood that their duty to their people came first, and that Madi was Clarke's people now. But maybe there could be room for one more in their family, their _kru_.

Madi considered this for a long time. "Don't go," she finally said. "You make Clarke's eyes smile."

"I hope so," Lexa said, looking past Madi to Clarke, who was trying to subtly wipe the tears that had formed in the corners of her eyes. She held out her hand, and Clarke moved to her, sitting by her side and leaning in as her arm slid around her shoulders.

Madi plunked herself down in Clarke's lap and looked over at Lexa. "Do you know any scary stories?" she asked.

Clarke snorted. "Madi..."

"Plenty," Lexa told her. "But I'd rather tell you one with a happy ending."


End file.
